Interloper
by Mark Geoffrey Norrish
Summary: A do-over fic in which four separate things went wrong even before the time jump. Now there are five people from the future, none of them really knows what's going on, and each plans to backstab at least two of the others.
1. The Third Champion

"The champion for Durmstrang," says Dumbledore, "will be Viktor Krum."

I join in with the rest of the Hall in smiling and applauding him. It's so nice when my gut reaction to things is what a nice, normal, well-adjusted fourteen-year-old's should be. It's probably more convincing, too.

Krum gets up and waddles over to the antechamber where the champions were supposed to go. I don't care what anyone else says, it's a waddle. I don't see why so many girls are after him. He's hardly the cutest guy available. He's not even the best-looking of the champions, and while I grant that not too many girls would agree with my first pick, Diggory's still handsomer.

I think it's Fleur next, then Diggory, then Potter. After all, even he couldn't have screwed this up in only twenty-four hours. Although, who knows. He's exceeded all expectations before.

The Goblet turns red again and fire spurts out, catapulting a second strip of paper into Dumbledore's hand. He reads it: "The champion for Beauxbatons is Fleur Delacour!"

I clap even harder for her, and barely suppress a wolf whistle, just like the first time. I love watching her walk. It's a good thing she never showed any interest in me – or Chang, who I guess is a proxy and nearer her age – because those hips are maybe the only things I'd deviate from the scenario for. Well, maybe not _just_ the hips.

Damn, these hormones are even worse than I remembered.

On the other hand, she eats at our table for the entire year. That's enough time to strike up a friendship, and – oh, maybe – more. I'm sure she'd want to keep it a secret, and if it did come out, it'd just about be believable that the same had happened last time, and we just hadn't been caught. Hmm. My French is probably a little rusty, and I still _look_ too young for her, and I can't act my real age without getting caught. Maybe I could show up to the Yule Ball without a date and cut in for a dance, then impress her with my maturity and intelligence?

Much like the first time, I'm so busy fantasising that I barely even notice the Goblet turning red again. It doesn't really matter, anyway; no-one can see me, and I know what's going to happen. Cedric, Harry, blah blah, Cedric dies except not this time because that's when we – by which I mean I, being the smart one – will spring our ambush and save the world. Could I maybe revise and take my NEWTs at the end of the year? Hmm, probably too risky. I could do that for next year, and risking my skin isn't worth merely one extra year with a job.

Dumbledore's eyebrows rise as he reads the parchment. "The champion for Hogwarts is Su Li."

It takes me a moment. Everyone begins clapping, but a wave of confusion sweeps the Hall, as people's gazes begin with the seventh-years at the front of the tables, scan through them for some overachiever they're never met, and then try the sixth-years with identical results, before a friend tells them and their gazes finally lock on me. And then the whispers begin.

Crap. Crap crap crappity crap. Well played, Snape and/or Fake Moody. Well played.

Kevin, one of currently only two people from my House-year with whom I'm on speaking terms – it's a long story – turns and raises his eyebrows slightly. He's a reserved boy; this is equivalent to a full-on gape from anyone else. I can only shrug at him now and hope he doesn't question too many of the lies I'm going to have to tell him later.

I edge out of my seat, stand and walk the length of the Hall. The applause tapers away when I'm less than halfway there, and I can hear the muttered remarks.

"Who on Earth is that?"

"There's no way she's seventeen. Twelve, _maybe._"

"Decent legs, though. For a kid."

"Well, that's it for us."

"Seriously?"

"Is it bad taste to bet on another school?"

"We got a Chinese champion?"

"_Who is she?_"

If I have any complaints about Ravenclaw, it's that we're calculating, manipulative, hypercompetitive sycophants. Other than that, we're good. The Hufflepuffs screamed themselves hoarse for Diggory; I haven't got a third of that. Of course, he did look the part rather more than I do.

The hum of people discussing me, nowhere near as quiet as they think they are, only gets louder, as the last of the applause dies down. Yes, as it so happens I do realise I'm not as pretty as Fleur is, thank you for reminding me, and if you had the guts to say it to my face I'd remind you that you just got outdone by a fourteen-year-old.

I finally reach level with the teachers' table. Dumbledore gives me a questioning look; I glance away. Flitwick gives me the same _what the hell_ look he gave me in sixth year when I abused Polyjuice to turn myself into a catgirl for Halloween. Snape tries to lock eyes with me; I keep mine sharply averted, thank you very much, and head on to the chamber.

So, Snape's done this to try and smoke me out, or maybe Fake Moody got orders from above, although that's less likely. How can I deny everything now? The same actions should yield the same results.

Well, technically the same actions haven't occurred. One of them changed one thing, probably Snape; he threw my name in. So he must have changed his route, so someone might have seen him, and they might have been reminded of something he once said …

I enter the champions' room. There are paintings all over the walls, and a roaring fire. Fleur is in pride of place before the fire; Krum is off to one side, glaring at her. Either he's wishing she'd move over and let him get more of it or, likelier, he wishes he had the courage to talk to someone so pretty. They look up at me, their brows rising in surprise.

"Is zere a problem?" Fleur asks.

"Um, heh," I say with a weak, forced chuckle. "I guess, sort of? I, I didn't think it was possible, but I'm the Hogwarts champion."

I'm not entirely forcing this nervousness. My plans to outsmart You-Know-Who may need some improvisation. That sentence is never a good one to have to think.

Fleur gives a superior little laugh. "You cannot possibly be old enough, _ma petite_."

This physically hurts in my chest. I _am_ old enough. You don't know everything, but you're cool, and I respect your opinion. I almost think of you as a big sister. Well, while I'm not thinking things from which one usually excludes one's siblings.

"I'm pretty grown-up for my age?" I try, and internally wince. That sounded like something a _first-year_ would say.

Fleur and Krum exchange sceptical glances.

"Zis competition is supposed to be an elite tournament," Fleur presses. "I don't want to win because I'm competing against little girls."

"Well," I say. "Maybe I'll surprise you?" No. Too self-assured. I give another self-deprecating laugh. "Yeah, um, I don't exactly want to be here either. Well, at least you have one old champion to fight against?" No. That was just pathetic. "_J'aime tes cheveux?_"

Last time, I scored a few points with her by speaking French, which only a few people in the entire castle can do at all. Complimenting a girl on her hair always works.

Instead, though, she just gives me this look of sheer noncomprehension. "_Quoi?_"

I blink. Was my pronunciation off? I don't think so; I've always had a good accent.

"Do you mean, _mes chevaux?_"

Oh, Nimue. The French words for hair and horses are only one letter apart. I wilt. Krum is just staring, like he can't believe what's happening, and Fleur is … I can't even look at her.

Fortunately, this is where Potter walks in. Thank Nimue for that. No matter how stupid I feel, I'm still a Ravenclaw, and he's only a Gryffindor, and, more importantly, he's got their attention. He's staring at _me_, though; obviously he knows I'm not supposed to be here. I suppose he'll be a good litmus test for how convincing I can act.

"'As she been recalled?" Fleur asks, and _wow_ but the rose has thorns. If I were physically capable of hating her, I think I would.

"Er, not exactly," Potter says. "I'm here because I'm … also the Hogwarts champion."

Fleur and Krum exchange another, even more incredulous, look.

There comes the pitter-patter of overgrown feet, and Ludo Bagman appears, looking exhilarated. He takes Potter and me by our arms and leads us forward. Despite what anyone might say, I generally try to minimise my body contact with old men, and deftly twist my arm out of his grip.

"This is extraordinary!" he exclaims, pretending not to notice. "No, _incredible_. Ladies, gentlemen, may I present – believe it or not! – the _fourth_ Triwizard champion?"

Harry is looking at me curiously. He doesn't know I made it back too, although he must at least suspect now. He can't possibly be thick enough not to, touchwood. I only wish he'd stop openly displaying curiosity about something that only merits it if you know how it happened last time.

"But now zere are _two_ from 'Ogwarts, and both are far too young."

"Li, wasn't it?" Potter asks. "What are you doing here?"

"What am _I_ doing here? What are _you_ doing here?"

I'd better tone it down. This is the first time, now or in the previous timeline for that matter, that I've ever spoken to him; I can't justify hating him too much yet, and I'm not the sort to hate someone without serious provocation. Maybe I can hate him for stealing my glory?

"Well," he says. "Weird things happen to me a lot, you know? But I've never noticed them happening to you."

What an idiot.

The door swings open, and in sweep the two Headmasters and one Headmistress, along with Crouch, McGonagall, Flitwick, and Snape. I keep my eyes firmly away from Snape's.

"Madame Maxime!" says Fleur. "Is it true, zat zese children are competing also?"

I may be in a child's body, but I could still use it like an adult.

I shake my head. That really isn't what I should be thinking about right now.

Although, it _would_ be fairly in character …

Maxime and Karkaroff take turns, alternately raging and taking sly potshots at Dumbledore. I try to repress my libido and wait for an opening. I'm going to need to do this perfectly.

"You needn't blame Dumbledore for Potter's misbehaviour, Karkaroff," Snape interrupts. "He's persisted at it for the past three years; if anything, we should have foreseen this latest –"

"That will do, Severus," Dumbledore says quietly, and Snape falls silent. Now or never. I clear my throat, and all eyes fix on me.

"Um," I say. I don't know why I'm _terrified_ now, and of people other than Snape, but there you are. Ravenclaws just aren't used to being glared at by teachers, I guess. "This might have sort of been my fault, actually."

McGonagall gives me her Look, the one she only needs to give anyone once for their entire life. "What exactly do you mean, Ms Li?"

"Yes, go on," says Karkaroff, seizing on the opportunity to blame Dumbledore by proxy.

"Well, how much do you know about Ravenclaw Bets?"

Flitwick drops his head into his hands, and I could kiss him. That's the exact sort of genuine acting that might just save my butt this year. McGonagall's eyes widen; Crouch makes a 'go on' gesture.

"It's a House tradition we have," I say. This is one of those lies that's strong because it's mostly the truth; we've had repeated run-ins with teachers because of the Bets, and every Ravenclaw will testify about them. "It's how a lot of our social standings work. Person A will say 'I bet you couldn't do X' to Person B, where X is something difficult but not impossible, and then B tries to do it. If they pull it off, they get credit for it, and if they don't, they lose some for failing; and A gets credit for posing good challenges –"

"Get to it," Flitwick says, his eyes scrunched shut, like a man on the gallows. Since he's Head of my House and therefore responsible for me, he sort of is.

"– right, well, anyway, when Professor Dumbledore described the Age Line, our year collectively Bet each other that we couldn't get our names into the Goblet anyway." This is also true, and I have at least nine people who'll corroborate; we brainstormed dozens of ways, almost all of them completely unworkable. "The fifth- and some of the sixth-years did too, I think."

"You – you did?" Potter asks. Gullible twerp.

"How did you get past the Age Line?" McGonagall asks.

"Well, actually, it was Professor Snape who gave me the idea," I say, and chance a look at him. He's staring; I instantly turn back to McGonagall. "In class on Thursday, he said that one Gryffindor boy had been acting like he was Confunded, and then something in how he was walking last night reminded me of that –"

Flitwick clears his throat again.

"– and anyway, I Confunded one of the older students into putting my name in instead of his." I wish I'd been able to think up a better story on such short notice. You know. One that won't get me a year's worth of detentions. "But I don't know why the Goblet chose me, rather than one of the other seventh-years."

I can take an educated guess at that, too. I don't think Snape or any of the others saw my face when the ritual completed; he would only have known it was a girl of my rough age with black hair, and that's only if I made it back at all. So he would have dropped the names of every girl who fit that description into the Goblet. I'm mentally older than any of the other students, and if the Goblet likes derring-do so much, it probably likes what I had to do to get back; if any of us made it back, of course the Goblet would select us.

"Maybe it gave me credit for that," I ramble on, "you know, for creativity? I mean, no-one else put as much work into putting their name in, so maybe –"

McGonagall gives me a glare twenty times worse than the last one, and I stare at my feet. Probably a good idea anyway, on second thoughts. Snape surely isn't the only one who can read minds.

"_Who was it,_" she orders.

"Um." I hesitate. "Cedric Diggory."

On the one hand, it's slightly more justification for the benefit of Snape and the other ones who made it back. If I knocked out the winner, even unwittingly, that would explain why the Goblet favoured me, right? But on the other, that's exactly what I would say if I knew how it went last time; it might have been more organic to pick someone else at random. I'm not good at thinking this fast on this many levels at once.

I think this checks out, and it's actually pretty plausible. I know for a fact that Terry and Padma both got their names in somehow, as part of that weird hypercompetitive dance of oneupmanship they have in lieu of a healthy relationship, and with a little digging Snape could probably find other people my age who did the same. I daren't hope he actually believes my story, but if I can act convincingly enough – and if Potter doesn't ruin everything again – he might fall for it long enough for my strategy to pan out.

"I didn't mean to pick on him," I babble on. Oh Nimue, I'm babbling. "I mean, he was just the first person who went by who I caught alone. I'm really sorry, I didn't think –"

"No," says McGonagall. "You _didn't_ think." Her expression promises heavy punishment later.

It suddenly strikes me what a _cow_ she's being, and how adults so often do that. I am, to all appearances, half a step away from bursting into tears, and her first thought is to kick me in the ribs. I feel a rush of gratitude toward Flitwick, who never does that. Fleur comes in to save the day, and I could kiss her, too, even more than usual.

"Well, zat is zat," she says, "but what about 'im?" She speaks with her hands, as all French people do, and indicates Potter without doing anything so vulgar as pointing at him.

"I didn't do anything like that," says Harry. "I didn't put my name in at all. Someone else must have put mine in."

"Well, of course 'e is lying," Maxime says impatiently. "'Oo would put someone _else's_ name into ze Goblet?"

"It hardly matters, does it?" Karkaroff said. "These children should be disqualified and expelled, and Hogwarts should choose a _real_ champion. Or, better yet, we should relight the Goblet and give myself and Beauxbatons an extra champion apiece, to keep the contest fair."

"Um, could I just forfeit?" I ask. Everyone glares at me, and I shrink again. "I mean – I never expected to actually be picked, and then there would …"

I trail off, seeing Crouch shaking his head. "Impossible," he says. "Your name, like the other three's, came out of the Goblet; there is a binding magical contract in place. You must compete."

"A contract? What are the penalties for reneging?" I ask.

The room suddenly falls silent, icy cold, and completely airless. I've known fear of torture before, of course, and intellectually I know that my life is in mortal danger because of what I know; but this is the first time I've actually felt _viscerally terrified_ of death. Maxime clenches a fist unconsciously by her side; Karkaroff runs his tongue over his teeth. Bagman turns grey.

"That," Crouch says, "is not a viable option."

My throat is too dry to speak. I nod and shrink back against the wall. I don't know what that's all about, but somehow I don't want to find out.

"The rules demand that both Potter and the girl compete," he repeats, "and there is no possibility to add further champions at this point. Durmstrang must console itself with the fact that both of Hogwarts' champions are significantly less experienced than her own."

Krum rolls his shoulders, rather than shrugging per se. "Two or tventy," he says indifferently.

Fleur snorts. "Twenty or two 'undred," she says, "but zat is not ze point. Ze point is zat zere is no glory in triumphing over children, no matter 'ow many chances zey might have."

"We can't simply ignore this," says Karkaroff. "Is no-one else curious about why Hogwarts alone has an additional contestant, in spite of the agreements, no matter their age?"

"I'm very curious," says Fake Moody, stumping in.

That idiot Potter tenses like a pit bull. I'll have my work cut out for me, keeping him from turning in and/or murdering the man before the third task, on top of not obviously showing off his future knowledge.

"Is that so," says Karkaroff. There's obviously a lot of history there. I think Karkaroff, or at least some of his friends were arrested by Real Moody, during the last war. And Fake Moody hates him because … he didn't go to Azkaban like he was supposed to? I don't really get Death Eater politics, but that sounds like plain common sense to me.

"The Goblet obviously wasn't working properly," says Fake Moody. "Why d'you suppose that is?"

"Why don't you _tell_ us why that is?" Karkaroff replies with feigned courtesy.

"Because it's been tampered with, obviously," Fake Moody replies, glaring at Karkaroff. "Because someone wanted Potter in the Tournament. They wanted him to have to compete."

"You're not suggesting Dark involvement, are you?" Flitwick asks, disbelieving.

"Surely not. Not when zere's such a simpler explanation," says Maxime. "Ze two undisciplined students who wanted to be selected."

My gaze happened to be on Fleur while she said this. There's a certain kind of mind which becomes distracted by the conjunction of Fleur Delacour and the word 'discipline'; it's not until Flitwick gently nudges me that I can meaningfully focus on the discussion again.

"Are you alright?" he asks kindly.

"Ah?" I say. "No, no, I was listening. Mr Crouch was talking about the tasks."

Flitwick gives me a sceptical look, but Crouch definitely isn't going to repeat himself for my benefit. Frankly, at this point, I just want to go to bed. I already know more about the rules than Fleur or Krum do, and the longer I stay here, the likelier I am to give myself away, or worse, make myself look even stupider in front of Fleur. I glance from Flitwick to McGonagall to Dumbledore and beg my leave, then hurry off.

A moment later, Potter is beside me, trotting to keep up. Damn it. Think happy thoughts.

"So, er," he says.

"Hm?" I say as dismissively as I can, vainly hoping he'll get the hint and go away before I kick him.

"Do you, er. Do you remember, before?" he asks.

That _idiot_. For all he knows, Snape or Fake Moody could be eavesdropping on us right now. Or Snape might try to read my mind. In fact, he probably will. Hmm. I'll have to do something about that.

"You mean, just now?" I say as blandly as I can.

He gives me a long look, then shakes his head. "Right. Yeah. Crouch said the first task was on the twenty-fourth, right?"

"Right," I say, although honestly I'm not sure. "Say … we're both out of our depth, here. What do you say we help each other out? I mean, nothing overt, I'm not saying we should _cheat_. Just, you know, we'd both prefer a Hogwarts victory, right?"

I seriously doubt my ability to put up with him for more than five minutes at a time without staving his useless face in, and he won't tell me anything helpful because I already know what all the tasks are, but if I really were fourteen, there's no _way_ I'd go three rounds with cockatrice-level threats without asking for as much assistance as I could get.

"That sounds fair," says Potter. He offers me a hand to shake; I shut my eyes and take it. "I mean, we're just fourteen, right? I'll let you know if I hear anything about the tasks."

"Thanks, Potter," I say.

"I'm Harry to my friends," he says with a smile.

I'm sorely tempted to point out that that makes us conspirators, not friends, but that would be just a bit too rude. "Well, this is the turn-off for Ravenclaw Tower, so … I'll see you around, I guess," I say instead. It's actually not the shortest route, but I'm about to say something I'll regret.

"Oh, okay," he says. "Well. Good night, then, Su."

…

AN: Most do-over fics are terminally short on dramatic tension, being basically canon except duller; the only reason I gave this idea a second thought was that in it, there are _five_ time travellers, and while they are nominally divided into two opposing teams, in reality, each of them is a greater threat to their 'allies' than their enemies are. I figure this is enough to guarantee tension, one way or another.

This is a pilot chapter; I'm trying to get over my Milk block as much as anything else, but if it's terribly unpopular I may drop the remaining story and cannibalise it to write something else. I'm also sitting on an original sci-fi inspired by a binge on Rebuild of Evangelion, and the embryonic love child of Worm and Sailor Moon.


	2. The Crystal Cave: Yaxley's Day

Yorick Yaxley tapped his fingers against his new face and went over his reasoning again one last time. This was his last chance to back out of his plan to betray the Dark Lord.

It wasn't that he wasn't _grateful_ to the former man. He had rejuvenated the purist cause like no other in centuries. Before his heyday, the ever-so-fashionable egalitarian movement had run completely unchecked throughout wizarding culture. Yorick still remembered, from his youth, the earnest discussions about whether Muggle Studies should be compulsory for purebloods; suggestions that the Ministry should give the Wizengamot's power to an elected body, with as little as twenty-five percent of its membership allocated to purebloods, and even that to be split evenly with the Light families; those ridiculous Meet A Muggle social events, paid for with _his_ taxes; and the catastrophic population drops in Hogsmeade and the other magical hubs, as halfbloods and even purebloods married Muggles and emigrated to their cities.

The Dark Lord had been a powerful warrior, certainly, but more importantly, he'd been a social rallying point. He helped codify the purist philosophies and politics; he wrote the responses one could give at dinner parties for when buffoons like Arthur Weasley got on soapboxes talking about those preposterous outreach programs. Under his leadership, blood purism became _cool_ again. Once again, the old families could hold their heads high and look down on the new magic rabble, as they should. Next to all of that, the fact that he managed to overthrow the Ministry was almost incidental.

And yet … Yorick had spent most of the last year as a senior bureaucrat. He'd done much more than his fair share in ensuring the traditional, sane world order, pushing papers rather than casting curses. And over the course of that year, he had learned one simple, immutable fact, no matter how hard it was to admit to himself, and no matter how unwise it would be to say it aloud.

Voldemort was a _really crappy_ ruler.

Take the wand policy, for example. The Dark Lord had ordered that only those with wizarding pedigrees were allowed wands. Good policy in a perfect world, to be sure, but he ordered it launched and completed within a few months, wiping out half the economy at a stroke. It also created droves of malcontents, many of whom turned to petty crime or even joined the Order of the Phoenix, which Yorick couldn't deal with because he had in fact had to fire something like a third of the DMLE under that same policy. When he reported this (making quite sure not to phrase it as a complaint, of course), the Dark Lord had ordered him to appropriate Mudbloods' Gringotts vaults and use the money to hire mercenaries.

Never mind that most Mudbloods had very little money to begin with, or that Gringotts fought tooth and nail every step of the way and barely gave him a fifth of the amount he needed, but the Dark Lord also demanded that he do this _urgently_. This meant that he had to post bounties rather than hire professional mercenaries; the Snatchers wildly rorted the system, and the money went to people barely any more desirable than the Mudbloods they replaced. At the same time, the fact that Mudbloods were no longer paying taxes meant that Thicknesse had to sign loan after loan on extortionate terms with Gringotts, and the departments all _still_ had massive funding cuts.

Without money, he could no longer honour bounties, and his remaining DMLE (the Dark Lord's byzantine instructions about _hiring_ were another story altogether) had to spend half their time keeping Snatchers in line; some of the little bastards began robbing halfbloods instead, and one gang was even caught shaking down Fawley's daughter. Even neutral purebloods began leaving Britain after that; it was really a mercy that they went back in time before he saw what _that_ did to his bottom line.

All of this was just one of the Dark Lord's ideas, in one department; obviously none of the Heads dared complain about things, but Yorick was not a stupid man, and he picked up enough hints to know that while the Dark Lord might be a genius at magic or philosophy or at waging asymmetrical war, he actually had no idea whatsoever of how to implement sensible peacetime reform. Even with the Order of the Phoenix largely neutralised, mostly thanks to Yaxley's tireless efforts, Magical Britain was going to fall sooner rather than later.

Even so, the status quo as it was before the Dark Lord's return was no more sustainable. With the Muggle population booms, the influx of Mudbloods was massive and still rising; wizarding traditions simply couldn't withstand the pressure. Everything beautiful about the wizarding world was being destroyed while he watched, and without the Dark Lord, there was nothing he or anyone else could do to stop it. Oh, he could arrange to vote down disruptive bills in the Wizengamot, or to undermine funding for the most odious of Muggle-lover ventures, but this was a war of attrition they couldn't win. Every year, the proportion of the population identifying with the Light over the Dark ratcheted upward another notch.

Really, what was needed was the best of both worlds; a Dark Lord who could bring the cause back to prominence, but who could be quietly retired when they reclaimed the Ministry. Of course, actually assassinating the Dark Lord would be quite impossible; a touch of finesse would be required. But then, Yorick _was_ a Slytherin alumnus; he was an expert of finesse.

It so happened that Yorick had been one of the closest companions of one Archeus Castlewright. Castlewright was quite a lacklustre duellist but a genius at support magics; he was often responsible for raising or breaking Anti-Apparition wards on raids, for example. When he had been shipped off to Azkaban after the last war, Yorick had rescued the man's personal library from the DMLE. He'd never had the time or inclination to read through it, but he understood there were numerous tomes on dark rituals, including the one the Dark Lord used for his resurrection.

If someone were to thoroughly research that ritual, enough to know how to _modify_ it such that the one revived could be _controlled_, or at least easily stopped at will, perhaps by a secret passphrase …

… well, the Dark Lord hadn't cared at all about the destruction his mismanagement had wreaked on purebloods; he'd do exactly the same thing again. It was practically Yorick's duty as a patriot to keep his country from ruin, be it from dilution by Mudblood or collapse by madman. Really, it was the kindest thing. He had no choice in the matter.

Yorick hadn't done that research yet, but he already knew enough of the general theory to know that it would be vastly easier, maybe even outright necessary, if he physically owned part of the revived one's soul, and he could examine and experiment on it at his leisure.

This brought him back to his present time and place, a tiny island with a pedestal in a coastal cave in the middle of nowhere, to which his Lord had directed him. Apparently, last time, Potter had destroyed most of the Horcruxes, the keys to his Lordship's immortality; on returning to this time, the Dark Lord had immediately dispatched him, Wormtail, and Snape to retrieve them and replace them with fakes. For this task, he had been given a nameless potion, which had taken three hours and over four hundred different ingredients to brew; it was a single-use draught, designed to be all but impossible to reverse engineer. The Dark Lord had also described the locket to him while he Transfigured the copy and bewitched it to act like the original if destroyed, so that even if Dumbledore or any of his lackeys did find it (his Lord knew that it had been found but not when), the timeline would proceed as in the original, and his revival would still be assured. Unless, of course, that girl had made it back …

He reached into his robes and pulled out the potion and one of the fake lockets. He unstoppered the potion and poured it into the basin; it reacted with the liquid already inside, fizzing and swirling, before turning to harmless salt water. He switched the real locket with the fake, making sure to put it in his _right_ breast pocket, then turned back to the little boat.

… … …

"My Lord, I have done as you asked," Yorick said, kneeling to the foul homunculus. He reached into his left breast pocket and withdrew the second fake.

Wormtail was still gone, on a similar mission to Yorick's; something about a ring. It hadn't been Yorick's place to question, and he hadn't. The great serpent dozed before the fire, built up high even though it was mid-morning; the Dark Lord sat on his chair, husbanding his strength.

"Excellent," he said, and reached out to accept the locket. "You have done well, Yaxley."

"I live to serve my Lord," Yorick said. It was a reflexive, meaningless line, like saying Bless You in response to a sneeze.

The Dark Lord admired the trinket for half a minute, before the snake brought its head over and took it from his hand and slithered out of the room to hide it Merlin only knew where.

"I have a new task for you," he continued.

"My Lord?"

"My spies have informed me that Hogwarts' Triwizard champions are Harry Potter and one Su Li."

Yorick blinked. "Su Li, my Lord?" He thought for a moment, but nothing came up. "That name means nothing to me."

The homunculus stared. Yorick wasn't sure it even had eyelids. "They further informed me that the girl postulated a plausible excuse for her selection. Snape may have underestimated the impact his actions had, when retrieving Ravenclaw's artefact."

"I see," Yorick said, not wholly truthfully.

"Snape told me he successfully used Legilimency on her and verified her story. However, if she were in fact from the future, and had spent a year under his tender care, she might have learned how to perform blind spot Occlumency. She is a Ravenclaw, he tells me, with above average grades."

"Do you believe it, my Lord?" Yorick asked. He fidgeted; he was too old to kneel for so long. "It is a difficult art and requires proper tutelage; I doubt this could have occurred with Snape as Headmaster, not without his knowledge and consent."

His Lord steepled his tiny, half-formed red fingers. "It is unlikely … but I would be a fool to discount the possibility when it is the only thing that can still threaten us. Snape says that she could have been the girl from the battle, albeit four years younger and with longer hair."

"If you wish to have her dealt with, would not he or Crouch be better positioned?"

"She is not to be harmed," the Dark Lord said. "Not until we are certain. If her story is indeed true, then she is no threat, and removing her will only see the Triwizard Tournament cancelled, our plans set back, and our knowledge of things to come invalidated. And if not … no, I want you to investigate her family."

"As potential hostages, my Lord?"

"Perhaps, eventually, but for now I only need information. Snape has told me that she is a half-blood; her father is just a Muggle, but her mother is a witch named Blaise Soucy. I wish to know more about them; whether their daughter could be so clever."

"Blaise Soucy, my Lord?" Yorick said in surprise. "I can tell you about her already; she worked for me, in the future. I never met her personally because she was stationed at our embassy in China, but I remember she had a very unimpressive family. As I recall, she herself is only a half-blood, and she has two Squib sons. She was upset with their and her husband's lots under our regime, of course, but she remained a loyal agent. I couldn't say whether this was only because we had her daughter at Hogwarts."

The thing before him pondered this. "Only one magical grandparent … it seems impossible. Even so, we have time. You will investigate this woman. I will know her NEWT results by the end of the week."

"Very good, my Lord."

"You may go, Yaxley."

"Thank you, my Lord."

Yaxley left and Apparated back to his manor, where he wasn't in his workshop ten seconds before he took out the real locket and did a double-take. He'd spent hours Transfiguring the first fake to his Lord's exacting description and corrections, and again, copying that down to the last detail; he knew exactly what the real thing was supposed to look like, and it definitely wasn't this. Baffled, he pressed it open, read the note inside, and began updating his schemes. Possibly it was time to call on his old friend Lucius Malfoy.


	3. Tactical Occlumency

I traipse up to Ravenclaw Tower, my mind spinning with worries about things to come. I can't just act the same as I did last time any more, because what kind of well-adjusted girl wouldn't be at all changed by making it into the Triwizard Tournament; but she wouldn't start acting like a mental eighteen-year-old either. I can't really remember how I acted when I was originally this age anyway, and there are two Death Eaters watching my every move. On the bright side, Snape probably can't remember much of my personality from last time either.

Maybe I could engineer an unfortunate accident for Fake Moody? If, hypothetically, he was hit by a stray hex from a scuffle in the corridors and he fell and hit his head, Madam Pomfrey would let him sleep it off, because magical revivals and head injuries don't mix too well; and if the spell put him out for more than an hour, his Polyjuice would wear off and his ruse would be up, without me being obviously responsible. On the other hand, Snape is involved this time; he'd cover for Fake Moody if that happened.

The problem is that last time, he made it the entire year without being caught; as far as I know, he never even had any near misses. He's smart. The other travellers are hopefully undecided about whether I made it back or I'm only champion through sheer luck, but that'll only last for as long as there aren't too many other unexplained deviations. I only have a few hours a week with him, anyway; if Potter can keep his head down, so can I. If.

I reach the Ravenclaw Tower and rap the knocker. It asks the Knights and Knaves riddle for the hundredth time; I answer without thinking, and the door swings open, emitting a blast of noise. What looks like my entire House is cheering for me; they've broken out lolly caches and probably sweet-talked the house-elves into providing more, and our own private feast is waiting for me. I'm honestly surprised; I'd assumed they would mostly be bitter and resentful that none of them was chosen, and this is much more effusive than they were in the Hall before … oh. Before Potter's name came out.

There's an unwritten rule in Ravenclaw that when there are only other Ravenclaws around, we're allowed to be as underhanded, unsupportive and cutthroat as we like in any competition; but when the other Houses are involved, we have to band together against them to win and uphold our House's honour. When it was me against the other two schools, everyone quite sensibly thought I had no chance anyway, so they were free to resent me for somehow cheating my way into the Tournament; but now that they know Potter's in it too, they have to support me until I beat him. It doesn't matter if I take third place, as long as he takes fourth.

Kevin and Pad are at the front of the crowd, respectively pressing a Snowtea and a chocolate muffin on me; I take both with a smile. Pad probably doesn't deserve it, since I suspect I'm currently just another proxy front for her eternal rivalry with Parv, but what the heck; it takes something special to get me to hold a grudge, and I saw her cursing Death Eaters not so long ago. Besides, she's probably about my third-best friend, and until recently the second-best who I knew hadn't been killed or worse by Snatchers.

"Su, you didn't tell me you actually _did_ it," Kevin says. "What's even the point of doing a Bet if you don't tell anyone?"

That's actually a really good question. I hope Snape doesn't think to ask it.

"How'd you get your name in?" Pad asks.

"I Confunded Cedric Diggory to put mine in instead of his," I say.

There's a ripple of mingled laughter and appalled looks as people repeat this to the people behind them. I guess I shouldn't regret my story, since it's hopefully saved my neck and I didn't have enough time to think of the perfect cover, but I do wish I'd thought up something which didn't make me sound like such a cow.

"That's _cold,_" says Terry, impressed, crowding around me with the rest of our classmates.

"I, um," I seize on the inspiration, "yeah, I sort of felt guilty after, so I didn't tell anyone. I guess there's no way it won't get back to him by tomorrow morning, though."

"What's the Confundus do, exactly?" asks Lisa. "I've never been too clear."

"It does a few related things," Anthony says. Like most of us, he likes showing off. "You can either disorient someone, or you can make them overlook minor details. Things like wearing odd socks … or not noticing if you were putting the wrong name into the Goblet. It's supposed to be basically a poor man's False Memory Charm."

Michael, who is the one who took the events of summer the most personally, frowns. "You seriously went and hexed another Hogwarts student?" he asks. "Why didn't you do that to a Beauxbatons or Durmstrang?"

"I would have," I improvise, "but they all went in big groups. I was there for a while, and Diggory was the first person who I could catch alone. I didn't want to pass him up in case he was the only one."

"When was that, anyway?" Anthony asks. "I thought you were here all last night, doing that Transfig scroll."

If I let them, my classmates will pick my story to the bone within minutes. "Does anyone have a history of the Tournament?" I instead ask the room at large. "I want to see if there's a pattern to what sorts of things they use for the tasks."

I haven't even spared a thought for them. A dragon, the Lake, and that maze. Not only do I need to survive, but I have to do so in a way which a fourth-year could plausibly manage, and I get the impression I won't be allowed to just make a few half-hearted feints at the dragon and then give up.

Our Quidditch captain, Roger Davies, elbows forward, a Bubbletea in hand, and gives me a smile that would be much more reassuring if it reached his eyes. I suppose he considers me to have bumped him; he's egotistical enough that he thought he was a shoo-in, as I recall from last time, and he rather resented Diggory. I think I'd better watch out around him. "I have the library's copy of the official history in my room," he says. "I made sure to get it out early, to have to read up on it, of course, but you might as well have it now. I'll hand it over in the morning and tell Pince, but we're celebrating having a Ravenclaw champion now, aren't we?"

"To be totally honest, I'm actually kind of glad it wasn't me," says Terry.

"I thought you entered your name, too," Anthony asks.

"Well, yeah," says Terry, "trial and error and Banishing Charms after curfew, but only to prove that I _could_. I'd as soon leave fighting rampaging cockatrices to the Gryffindors. Those Skrewts of Hagrid's sound bad enough."

Padma, Steve and I give involuntary shudders. All three of us dropped Care like a burning coal after we scraped our OWLs; hopefully Hagrid won't ask too many questions if I tell him I need time off every now and then for Tournament-related reasons. He's a half-giant, not too bright, and I think he was rather distracted for most of this year.

"They said they were introducing new safety measures this time," says Kevin. "I'd think that taking the five-X creatures out would be the obvious first step."

Ah, Kevin, how charmingly naïve you are.

"D'you think you might have a chance?" Padma asks. "At least against Potter. I mean, those things he did at the ends of first and second year are probably sort of like this, so he has some experience on you" you got that right "but you get better grades than him, and, well, you _are_ a Ravenclaw."

"You'll surely beat him in at least one task," Michael says, then, innocently, "The second one's sometime in winter, right?"

This is a veiled fat joke; he's suggesting I'm well-insulated. The other girls of our year are all gangly and lissom, as healthy fourteen-year-old girls usually are. I'm not actually fat, but I am visibly heavier than the others. It's partly from muscle, anyway; I'm one of those rare girls who exercises regularly, not that Michael has ever noticed. He's going to be insufferable when he finds out just how cold the second task really will be. I pretend not to get it.

Cho Chang makes her way over, most of her year trailing in her wake. She's one of those girls from whom everyone has at most two degrees of separation; at least one of your friends is almost guaranteed to be one of hers, and she has the knack for making even her most peripheral acquaintance feel like a bosom companion. "Congratulations, Su!" she says, giving me a hug. "I'm really proud of you!"

It's a good thing she didn't start dating Diggory until the Yule Ball. I wouldn't want an older, much more popular girl from my own House to hold a grudge against me for shafting her boyfriend. I wonder whether they'll still date this time around.

"No promises – this is OWL year, after all, and the homework's pretty intense – but maybe sometime some of us from my year could help you with advanced work?" Cho offered. "You know, above and beyond the sort of things from class and Charms Club?"

"Isn't there a rule against helping the champions with the Tournament?" Anthony asks. Trust him to have memorised the rulebook.

"Who, us?" Cho replies sweetly. "We're not; we'd be helping with advanced studies. It's none of our business what Su does with that."

"I – thank you; that'd be excellent," I say. It'll be the perfect excuse for me cutting loose a little, or if I accidentally act too competent for my age. Besides, I've only been back a day, and already my friends are seeming a little bit … well, childish, I guess.

Most of the rest of my House comes up over the rest of the night, alone or in small groups, to congratulate me or offer advice; I play my role pretty well, I think. I know that they're all remarkably warm toward me compared with how they were an hour ago, and maybe I should be bothered by that, but it's actually really nice to be admired like this for a change. I've never been one of the popular girls, for a variety of reasons, but I could get used to it.

… … …

My classmates try to give me a sort of guard of honour as we head down to breakfast, but Flitwick intercepts me and pulls me into his office as soon as we make it out of the tower.

"I'd like to give you my congratulations on becoming a champion, and wish you the best of luck with the Tournament," he says, "but I'm afraid I also have to give you a punishment."

I nod. After all, if he didn't, McGonagall would, and she's stricter. "Of course, sir," I say. "I do feel really bad about jinxing Diggory."

"What do you think would be fair?" Flitwick asks.

He does this sometimes, at least for Ravenclaws. He's not offering to let me choose my own punishment, obviously; he's trying to gauge how sorry I really am. He generally lets you off relatively lightly if you can guess what he's thinking; it shows you know why what you did was wrong, I suppose.

"A public apology to him, House points and a detention," I say. He nods and motions me to elaborate. "Or multiple detentions. Um, let me think. You're supposed to give points for individual efforts but deduct them for group offences, or things too small for a full detention; this is neither, so not many points but more detentions. Maybe ten points, just so there's something there. Lots of people applied, so the chances he would have been the champion are pretty low anyway; but I used a mind-affecting spell, which Ravenclaws are supposed to consider anathema … no-one was actually hurt and I wasn't acting maliciously, so definitely not a full suspension, and you never give more than ten detentions at once … a week, sir?"

He nods. "No points; Hufflepuff will take it as an insult if I take so few, and there's no call to take too many." Meaning, he doesn't want to lose the House Cup. "We don't want to make life difficult for you around the House, after all. I'll make it five detentions, one every third night, starting tonight."

I nod. He doesn't like giving back-to-back detentions; they interfere with homework. "I'll apologise just as soon as I see him next. Sir – I don't want to risk the other schools accusing me and Potter of working together; could we have our detentions held separately?"

He blinks. "He's not a Ravenclaw; Minerva is responsible for him. She hasn't said anything about it to me."

I'd forgotten that he wasn't punished last time. Detentions aren't really so bad for me now, not compared with … some of them I've had in the future, and they'd probably even be a little relaxing since there's less risk of giving myself away; but I can't just let that slide, on principle. Besides, it'd be out of character. "Wait, what? You mean I wouldn't have got anything either if I hadn't confessed to it?"

"That's not what I said," Flitwick says hastily. "Minerva believes he is innocent; it's not my place to overrule her on her student."

"But she only believes that because he denied everything," I counter. "Sir."

"It is possible that he was telling the truth," Flitwick replies.

I give him a look.

"An outside possibility," he concedes. "What would you have me do? I cannot overrule Minerva, nor can I refuse to punish you when you've been caught subverting the rules."

I think about this. If I were a fourteen-year-old girl more concerned with finding a boyfriend than saving the world, what would I say? "What about deferral?" I suggest. "I do the detentions either when Potter is proven innocent or when he's found guilty and gets his own. That way, I don't get out of it, but I don't get penalised for confessing either."

One perk of being a Ravenclaw, or a Hufflepuff for that matter with Sprout, is that Flitwick is a real softie. If you know how to appeal to his sensibilities, you can get out of anything.

"That … does sound fairer," he admitted. "But don't tell anyone; I don't want a fight with Pomona over this."

"Absolutely," I say, and let a grin break out over my face. "Will that be all, Professor?"

Outside, only my closer friends have waited for me: Kevin, Pad, as well as Lisa, Mandy, Terry and Anthony. Perfect. Of them, I think Lisa was the only girl who was sitting close enough to me last night that, if one of the teachers had been staring at me, she might have thought they were staring at her instead. I finger my wand in my pocket. Time to neutralise Snape's mind reading.

"What was that about?" Kevin asks.

"Oh, just wishing me well and giving me a slap on the wrist for Diggory," I say. "Hey, something's been bothering me. Have any of you ever heard of any magic that you can do with eye contact but without using your wand?"

They exchange glances.

"I remember once reading about a spell like that which lets you see how someone looks naked," I lie. "This was years ago, I don't remember where or what it was called."

"And that's the last time I ever meet your gaze," Pad says.

"I also thought it was kind of creepy how Snape was staring at me just after my name was picked out, last night," I go on.

"You don't think?" Kevin asks, disbelieving.

I draw my wand and sweep it over my classmates; there's a twinkling of light. "_Confundo._ Anthony, you were the one who read about it. Mandy, you've heard it somewhere too. Lisa, you were the one who just complained about Snape perving on her."

I slip my wand back into my pocket and assume a disgusted expression. Anthony was right. I can't cast that spell well enough to make anyone actually believe anything, but if they already don't really trust someone, it can nudge that unease into skittishness, which is all I really need. And no-one really trusts Snape.

"Isn't he, like, forty?" Mandy asks.

"Also, he spends a _lot_ of time glowering at Potter," Anthony says thoughtfully. "Or maybe he's actually staring at Weasley or Hermione."

"We should warn her," Terry says chivalrously. "You know, just in case."

We all know her from Arithmancy. She's such a good ambassador for Gryffindor that we've made her an honorary Ravenclaw instead. The other two … it's not that we dislike them, not yet, it's just that they're not much more than faces in a crowd.

"You want to tell Tracey?" Pad asks me. "She's in his House; she needs to know. Actually no, maybe I should tell her; if you say it, she'll think you're just fantasising."

"Oh, shut up," I say, repressing a smirk. I'd feel bad about starting rumours about Snape if I didn't know firsthand what he'd do if he were Headmaster. I'm unhappier about having to diverge from the original timeline, but if I let him read my mind it's all over, and it'll be a bit of a giveaway if I'm the one person in Hogwarts who suddenly stops meeting his gaze for no reason.

We reach the Great Hall; I wave my friends off and make my way over to the Hufflepuff table. From the corners of my eyes, I see my nasty little rumour spreading like wildfire; it should be all over the school by sundown at the latest. Diggory is surrounded by a happily chatting knot of friends; I stop behind him, assume my most contrite expression, and clear my throat.

He turns around and offers me a smile. "Su Li. Well done on making champion. How did you do it?"

I open my mouth, but – to my astonishment – something catches in it.

"Su?" he asks, his smile wavering.

"I, um," I say. Well, it's not like he won't hear by lunchtime anyway. I guess that everyone in Ravenclaw felt too awkward to say anything to anyone in Hufflepuff, but it'll make its way over via the other two Houses soon enough. My voice drops. "I jinxed you."

"What do you mean?" he asks. There are no more smiles around him.

I scuff my foot. I know no-one will ever believe that I'm not just acting in order to save my own skin, but for some reason I actually feel guilty about this. I have no idea why. I didn't even do anything to him; if anything, I'm the victim here. And even if I had done it, it would've done him a favour; he _died_ last time. And yet, I still feel like a fist is squeezing my heart. Maybe it's a hormonal thing.

"When you went to put your name into the Goblet of Fire, I hit you with a Confundus Charm." I clear my throat and speak up. "I tricked you into putting my name in instead of yours. That's how I got past the Age Line."

"Oh," he says.

The Hall is quiet; everyone's listening to and staring at me. Well, Flitwick did want a public apology.

"I'm so, so sorry," I go on. "It was … a really scummy thing and I shouldn't have done it. I got a bunch of detentions for it, and …"

"Don't worry about it," Diggory says. "It's all …"

Clearly it isn't alright. Why does he have to be so _nice?_ If he were a scumbag, this would be so much easier. Not that it should be hard in the first place.

A curvy blonde girl sitting on his left scowls at me. "If you got in unfairly, you should drop out and let someone else in," she says.

"I tried," I say. "They wouldn't let me."

"It's true," Potter calls from the next table over. Everyone's gaze swivels to him; like the idiot he is, he's forgotten that he had stage fright when he was last fourteen. "Remember what Professor Dumbledore said?" He nods toward the staff table, where out Headmaster is watching with silent interest. "There's a binding magical contract. I'd drop out too if I could."

Standing up for me like this isn't anywhere near enough to make me forgive you, Potter.

"Yeah, right," that idiot Malfoy calls out, and all of a sudden the air is thick with insults flying back and forth. Great. At this rate, Snape will murder me in my sleep by Friday.

"Um, anyway," I add to Diggory, "I'm really sorry." Before he can respond, I give an awkward curtsy-bow thing and all but run back to Ravenclaw table, facing toward the Slytherins.

The shouting crescendos, and I begin to worry that it's about to break into a full-scale riot, when there comes a silvery ringing sound. Dumbledore is tapping his goblet with his spoon. His expression is blank and pleasant, he's chewing thoughtfully on a rasher of bacon, and for all the world he might have done it accidentally, but silence falls almost instantly. He places his spoon back on the tablecloth, still apparently oblivious, and noise slowly returns to the Hall.

"Maybe you should have left that until lunchtime," Kevin says.

"Hm?"

"We have double Potions with them in half an hour," he elaborates.

I sigh and slump back in my seat.


	4. Tactical Legilimency: Snape's Day

"Um, sir? I'm here."

"I can see that, girl." Snape scowled out of habit. "You will be cleaning this dungeon without magic. All of the benches, the floor, the walls that you can reach."

She glanced around. Her eyebrows rose slightly; it was an awful lot of work for the rule he'd accused her of breaking. He'd waited for her to put even a single toe out of line for their entire lesson, but when they reached the end of the second period and she hadn't so much as hesitated in her robotic work, he was reduced to snapping at her for talking too loudly, and ignored the five classmates who all insisted that she was making sure her partner was on the same step as her.

If he had been anyone else, she might have objected, but every student past their first year knew to keep quiet take their licks from him. "Yes, sir," was all she said as she fetched a sponge and water and began her task, never once meeting his eyes. Snape sat back at his desk and set to marking essays.

Not for the first time, he wondered what the hell he was doing with his life.

The first time around had been relatively simple, when he thought about it. He had loved Lily Evans; Potter was all that was left of her in the world; therefore, he had to protect the boy, even if he was as horrible as his father. It was straightforward; it was absolute.

On the night of the third task, the Dark Lord had risen again. This was a problem, certainly, but it didn't make matters complicated per se. He was the principle threat to Potter's life; Dumbledore had a plan for dealing with him; therefore Snape's path forward was clear. He had to work as a double agent against the Dark Lord and help bring Dumbledore's plan to fruition. No mean feat, of course, but it was unambiguous; he could fail, and the boy could die, or he could succeed, and the boy would live.

But then, Dumbledore had revealed that the boy would die either way. This was a paradox, a double bind; there wasn't any point to anything any more. He was broken enough that he kept going, like a cuckoo clock winding down its spring after its owner forgot about it, but he knew perfectly well that it wouldn't be long until he stopped just the same.

And then … the impossible had happened. He'd been given a real second chance, and went back to a few days ago, along with, he first thought, the Dark Lord and Yaxley. Not long after, Potter had begun acting suspiciously, and a deft Legilimentic probe was enough to discover that he had somehow survived long enough to make it back. Similar searches on his bookends proved that they hadn't; Snape was quite flummoxed by this, until he remembered that Potter had a piece of the Dark Lord's soul in his scar. Maybe that had kept him alive for the last few seconds.

"Bother!" the girl muttered. "My watch has stopped!"

"Keep going," Snape said indifferently.

The Dark Lord had given him three instructions before the jump: act exactly as he had before, telling no-one about the future, not even Crouch the younger or Dumbledore; report any divergences to a certain drop point by owl; and move a certain diadem for some reason, leaving a fake in its place. He had obeyed the first and third.

Because, really, what else could he do? He couldn't truly obey the Dark Lord, not when this would mean the complete destruction of the last memory of Lily Evans; nor could he return to Dumbledore, who was equally complicit and who would happily sacrifice Potter to seal his nemesis' fate. The soul fragment remained in Potter's head (at least, he assumed so); if the Dark Lord returned again, there would be no way to save Potter.

But maybe, if he _didn't_ return … well, that would be naïvely optimistic. For a man like the Dark Lord, an eventual return was all but guaranteed. But if it were delayed for long enough, years and years, and Potter had children of his own first, and only then did they both die, then that would resolve the paradox. Lily's legacy would finally be ensured.

His first thought was to simply visit the Dark Lord, kill or incapacitate Wormtail, and throw the homunculus down a mineshaft, but there were two flaws with this plan. One was that he didn't actually remember where the Dark Lord was. He could probably prise the information from Crouch's or maybe Potter's minds, assuming even they knew, but likely not without being detected; and things could go very badly indeed if he tried, for instance if he were caught and outed or even sent to Azkaban. And the Dark Lord would probably escape anyway; he was nothing if not slippery, and undoubtedly had a maze of security wards around his nest.

The second flaw was that the Dark Lord would eventually revert to spirit form, and that would be impossible for Snape to contain. In particular, he had proven capable of possessing Potter, whose family blood wards may or may not still have been active, given his soul was over seventeen but his body was not; either way, the Dark Lord could simply wait three more years. On top of all that, the Dark Lord very likely had yet more tricks up his sleeve which he'd withheld even from Snape; and if he began deviating from the original timeline, there was literally no telling what could happen.

"Sir?" the girl asked. "This stain won't come off; I'll need something stronger than water."

"Scrub harder," he said, not really listening.

Potter apparently thought that Snape wouldn't notice his little slip-ups; the quiet, the wariness, the other signs of combat fatigue. He'd been a little too deft in class, too, although he hid that reasonably well by dragging his feet. No doubt, he thought he could proceed as he had the first time around, and at the last minute, dob Crouch in to Dumbledore and lead an ambush to capture the Dark Lord. A fine plan, if he had been a good enough actor to fool Snape; but if he were successful, Dumbledore would still ultimately arrange for his death. Still, at least he could count on the boy to be predictable, as long as he kept to the original timeline too.

More concerning was the girl. Soon after they arrived in the present, the Dark Lord had contacted him with further orders, to submit to the Goblet of Fire the names of every girl in third and fourth year who resembled the one from the end of the original future, so they could find out who it was and whether they had made it back. Su Li's was the name that came out; one of the many uninteresting overachievers of her House to whom he had scarcely given a second thought.

If her story were true, she was little more than a warning for him to minimise his alterations to the timeline, but if she were lying – and it was definitely suspicious that she hadn't given him a single opportunity to use Legilimency on her – she was unpredictable. He had no idea what she wanted, if anything; she could diverge at any moment, for any reason. He had told the Dark Lord that neither she nor Potter had made it back, because this maximised the chances that he would stick to the original timeline and thus Snape's ability to predict him; but Snape still needed to know the truth about her for himself.

For that, he needed to interrogate her. That is, he needed some pretext to give her a solitary detention.

"Li," he said softly.

She turned and looked at a space two feet to his left, her slanted eyes half-shut. "Sir?"

"I know," he said.

She blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"Do not play coy with me."

"Um, I'm sorry, it's just that there are lots of things you could be talking about, sir," she said, nervously twisting her hands around each other. "Do you mean the Triwizard Tournament?"

He glared, but he couldn't get a lock. In the same way that a duellist might be flat-footed by a left-handed opponent if he had only ever fought right-handers, hers were slanted, and he'd only ever used Legilimency on rounder eyes. She picked her sponge back up and resumed scrubbing.

"We could be allies," he said.

"Teachers aren't supposed to offer help to the champions," she said dutifully. "And I don't want to risk this turning into Ravenclaw and Slytherin against –"

"I'm not talking about the damn Tournament," Snape interrupted, his voice still soft, "as you know full well."

She blinked again. "Um. Are you sure? If it's not that, I don't think I've broken any rules lately … well, other than taking toast into my dorm, but I don't think –"

"I'm talking about the fact that you're from the future, that you started that asinine rumour about me in a pathetic attempt to protect yourself, and that you are planning to interfere with the timeline," he said. If that didn't get through her poker face, nothing would. "What I don't know is how you plan to interfere with it, or whether you are cooperating with Potter to do so."

She froze for a moment and blinked a few more times, before her hands resumed their twisting. "Um. I think I was _there_ when that rumour started, if that's what you mean, sir. Lisa and Anthony were discussing it, and … I guess they played off each other?"

Snape snarled. "Look me in the eye when you're speaking to me!"

"I didn't believe it!" Su said hurriedly. "It just, I mean I've heard about jinxes that you need to keep eye contact for, sir, so I thought, you know, until I had time in the library to look it up, well, we have the right to privacy of thoughts, and –"

"_Imperio,_" he interrupted, drawing his wand in one smooth motion. "Tell me the truth: are you from the future?"

She gave a relaxed smile. "No. I'm from the past."

Using Legilimency on someone under Imperius was useless because it gave so many false positives; the curse sometimes caused the user to effectively read their own mind without realising, and to mistake their own suspicions for the subject's beliefs. Ordering a subject to tell the truth was imperfect, as they could eventually develop enough resistance to give misleading partial truths, but it was worth a try. He would have simply broken out the Veritaserum, but there was too much risk that Flitwick would notice its aftereffects.

It didn't occur to Snape that during the previous year, Unforgivable Curses had been legalised. If Su really were from then, she'd have had ample practice learning to work around them; and Ravenclaws practice their wordplay every time they visit their tower.

"Do you know what will happen over the next three years?"

"I'll still be studying," she said dreamily.

"In any more detail? Do you have any idea who will be the next Defence professors?"

"None. I suppose you probably will be eventually if you keep applying for it."

"Did you really curse Diggory?"

She paused. "No," she said. "I only charmed him."

"And you did this because of me."

She considered this one. "Technically yes. But partially and indirectly."

"Are you cooperating with Potter?"

"No. I'm pretending to, but I don't mean to give him any actual help."

"So, I have in fact wasted the past hour in a detention with a vapid twit of a girl, trying to uncover a secret which isn't there."

"I'm not vapid," Su said.

Snape sighed in disgust and cancelled the curse with a flick of his wrist. "_Obliviate,_" he added, putting his wand away before she came to her senses. "Well? That bench isn't going to clean itself!"

"Sorry sir!" she cried, and set to scrubbing with renewed vigour.

What he really needed was a longer-term solution for keeping the Dark Lord incapacitated. There were probably Dark rituals capable of binding spirits like that, but he rather doubted that Dumbledore would let him research them, or that he could sneak the references past the wily Headmaster.

But then, maybe he didn't have to. After all, he wasn't the only former Death Eater on the grounds.


	5. Future Ex

Care of Magical Creatures is comfortably my least favourite subject, and is a horrible note to end the week on. When I enrolled, either one and a half or five years ago, it was under the assumption that we would be taught by Professor Kettleburn, who, the older students assured us, was one of the better teachers. They compared him to McGonagall.

In the very first class, which we heard about second-hand over lunch, Malfoy was mauled.

Kevin immediately dropped out and flatly refused Flitwick's pleas for him to return; he got away with filling his transcript with a bunch of extracurriculars instead. This left our class with only three Ravenclaws, and we only stayed because it was reputed to be an easy OWL. Honestly, firing Hagrid was about the only worthwhile thing Umbridge did in all of fifth year.

This year is definitely the worst. In third, we only ever had flobberworms, which are boring and useless but which don't subsist on human flesh, and by fifth he was beginning to internalise the idea that we humans are relatively fragile, but this year, we have to deal with those hellspawn Blast-Ended Skrewts. To make matters worse, our class is split with the Hufflepuffs, with ten of them to three of us, and they're all still bitter about Diggory. I swear, anyone would think they knew for a fact that he would have got in if I hadn't displaced him.

Last time, we, they, and the Slytherins were mostly unified against Gryffindor, because Diggory was the obvious real champion and Potter positively reeked of being a fraud. Malfoy even made those tasteless badges, and I have to admit that I wore one for a while, although at least I mostly kept it on the SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY mode. This time the Hufflepuffs are barracking for Potter, and the Slytherins are on my side. I'm not really sure why; I know that Malfoy hates Potter (everyone knows that) and they have that stupid rivalry with Gryffindor, but I wouldn't have thought that that would be enough for people like them to side with someone like me. It's a little disturbing seeing them smile at me, given certain events of the future-that-was.

Meanwhile, I've been preoccupied with the number twenty-eight for over a week now. When Snape gave me that arbitrary detention the other night, I immediately assumed it was an excuse to try to read my mind; it didn't make a lot of sense as a disciplinary action. The problem was, there wasn't anything I could really do to get out of it; teachers have the right to assign detentions as they saw fit, and it would have been out of character to complain too much about it. Flitwick certainly wouldn't have countermanded it on my behalf.

If Snape did try something, it was a safe bet he'd erase my memory afterwards; he knows that if he didn't, I'd have no choice but to expose him. I have no idea how to defend against a memory attack, but I did have one idea for at least knowing whether he tried it: I pulled the key out of my watch on the hour, so that it stopped ticking, and every few minutes, or thirty seconds or so if Snape was doing anything, I turned it forward one minute, disguising this as fidgeting.

When I got out and checked, my watch read twenty-eight past. I'd counted twenty-five turns.

It was possible that I'd just miscounted, obviously, but I don't remember him trying _anything_, which just doesn't make sense. Assuming that I've got it right so far, that would give him either three very brief attempts or one of a minute and a half.

The first possibility doesn't worry me. I should hope that I could hold out against any sort of interrogation for thirty seconds; that's only enough time for him to try to bluff me into admitting something, and I decided in advance that I'd deny everything even if he claimed to have proof. The second, though … ninety seconds might just have been long enough for me to slip up and tell him something that would get me killed, especially if he was using magic. Unfortunately, I have no idea whether I did. On one hand, he might not have bothered erasing my memory if he'd believed me; why bother? But on the other, if he thought I made it back, he should have dealt with me permanently, then and there; by either Obliviating me of all of my memories of the future, or by hitting me with Imperius and ordering me to do nothing for the rest of the year to stop him from reviving his old master.

If he does know, then he's probably planning to change the timeline on his own terms, presumably by preempting my ambush somehow. That would be Bad. I need some way of finding out. Maybe _I_ could learn mind-reading and try it on _him?_ Probably not; I'd need to make eye contact, and then he'd definitely know. I'm not sure I want to find out which of us can Obliviate the other first. Maybe I could slip him some Veritaserum somehow? I've been thinking I should mostly rely on potions for the Tournament, because it'd be more believable for a little girl to manage one of those than to cast difficult magic on the spot, since you can try potions over if you muff them up; I could reserve a lab and set up a production line, and use one cauldron for –

I skip backward to avoid a _whoosh_ of fire, trip over a lump of withered pumpkin, and fall flat on my butt, letting forth a string of invective. My Skrewt turns to Pad's and raises its stinger threateningly; she pulls at her leash to get some distance between them, because it looks like the thirteen Skrewts are about to become twelve, but hers is on the warpath and she's far too skinny to stop it.

"Hagrid! Help!" she shrieks, digging her heels into the ground but sliding inexorably forward.

The half-giant bounds forward and tackles my Skrewt; I hurry after and grab the leash, and keep a firmer hold this time. Pad's is straining forward, trying to take advantage of mine being stunned and squashed, but Hagrid turns and shoves it away before it can permanently solve one of our thirteen problems for us.

"Yeh should tie yer lead round yer wrist, so yeh don't drop it again," he helpfully suggests to me.

"Um. Thanks, but I don't think that'll be necessary," I say, rather than pointing out that I'd've been roasted if I'd been tethered to the damn thing. "I just wasn't paying attention."

"Skrewts are tricky blighters; gotta keep yer head with 'em," he says affectionately, and runs after Steve, whose charge is attempting to make a break for the Forbidden Forest and freedom.

"'Neek tar poot mare'?" Pad asks, repeating my exclamation reasonably well. "Is that French?"

"It basically translates as 'drat'," I tell her.

She nods and, with a Herculean effort, wrenches her Skrewt away. I take the hint and try to lead mine away from anyone else's, which is easier said than done. They're already unmanageably strong, and they're only going to get bigger.

I hate this class so goddamn much.

From the castle comes Ginny Weasley, heading for us. I remember she was one of the leaders of Dumbledore's Army against Snape, the Carrows, and the worst of the students. She had only limited successes, but I have to give her credit for achieving _something_. Back in the present, though, she's only a tiny, nervous-looking girl.

She goes over to Hagrid and exchanges words I can't hear over the crackling flames of the last of the pumpkin patch, but they're obviously talking about me. He nods, and they come over, Ginny keeping a safe distance from my abomination.

"Uh, Su Li, right?" she asks, out of politeness rather than actually asking. I'm rather distinctive, with my Franco-Oriental features.

"Mm-hmm? You'd be Ginny Weasley, right?" I reply, offering her as bright a smile as I can manage under the circumstances, keeping one eye on the Skrewt. I'm pretty sure I don't canonically know anything about her yet, other than the incident with the Chamber of Secrets. That might explain the nerves.

She nods. "Mr Bagman wants you in the castle. They're taking photos; I think they're doing a story on the Triwizard champions for the papers."

"Are they?" I ask, widening my eyes. "Right now? Oh, bother, I was just getting into this, too." Ernie Macmillan, who is near enough to overhear, shoots me a filthy look. He's covered in sod; evidently he got one of the sprightlier Skrewts. "If they're waiting for us, we'd better hurry; Professor, do you mind putting him away?" I press the leash into his hand and hurry off before he can refuse. Ginny is just as quick.

We walk in silence for a while. Presently, she says, "Are you alright?"

I glance down; I've been rubbing my rump. It's probably going to bruise. "Yeah," I reply, "just a bit sore from a fall. I feel like a bit of an idiot, though; I should have rolled, but my foot got caught."

"Oh, do you play Quidditch?" she asks. One of the first skills taught in flying lessons is how to roll when falling, which generally reduces injuries caused by being unseated, although it's not enough to prevent them altogether if you fall from more than a few yards up.

I nod. "I'm nowhere near good enough to make our team, but I still like to play. I'm best at Chasing, although I can Beat well enough if there aren't any boys. How about you? Seeker, right?"

"My brothers never let me play," she says bitterly. "I'd love to, though. I like flying."

There's a pause.

"Have you been playing long?" she asks.

I shake my head. "No, just since I got here. I actually learnt about rolling from savate." Ginny gives me a blank look. "It's a kind of kickboxing; my mother says that all girls should learn some sort of self-defence. I was never much good at that, either, although I wouldn't mind putting my shoe through one of those Skrewts."

It sounds good on paper, but outside of penny dreadfuls it's not really any more useful than any other good exercise, like swimming. The problem with is that healthy boys are twice as strong as me, and usually have longer reach and a few other advantages; I don't have the finesse to overcome all that, and frankly I wouldn't have the stomach. I'm not a fighter at heart. Although there was that one time in second year when I persuaded Parkinson to stop pinching me by jump-kicking a branch off a tree.

"Those things look so horrible," Ginny says, shivering. Purebloods never care about Muggle sports.

I'd assumed that everyone was forced to take care of the Skrewts, but I suppose not: the younger kids aren't durable enough. And even Hagrid can't justify wasting the OWL students' time on those things. Maybe. Of course, we're not really durable enough either.

"They are," I say. "But don't worry; I expect they'll all have killed each other off by the time you're old enough for them."

"Merlin, but I hope so," she says. "You know, I've never had a split class timetable like you Ravenclaws do. It took me a little while to find you, we might be a bit late."

"Gryffindors pretty much all take Care and Divination, don't they?" I ask, increasing my pace a touch. She nods. "Except Hermione."

"You know her?" she asks.

"Yeah; she's in our Arithmancy and Runes classes. She's the only Gryffindor in our year taking either, so they threw her in with us. She's pretty cool." Ginny nods. I'm surprised those two were ever friends; their personalities don't really seem like they'd mesh. I guess I don't know really Ginny well enough to judge. "Flitwick makes us take three electives each, unless we overload with extracurriculars; we mostly take Arithmancy and Runes, but getting us to agree on the third was like herding kneazles, so they split that class. You tried the Muggles room first, right?"

She nods. "One of your classmates told me to try here. Muggle Studies looks interesting; I applied, but Professor McGonagall refused on scheduling grounds."

"That happened to one of my classmates, Padma, who signed on for Divination," I say. "She's still bitter about it. You shouldn't be, though. I've seen some of the readings they give for Muggles. It doesn't have a lot in common with the real thing."

"Huh, I'll have to tell Dad that," she says. "He took the subject, you know, loved it, and ever since – oh, here we are. Well, good luck, I suppose. Tell Harry I said hi?"

"Will do, Ginny," I say, flashing her another smile, and I head inside.

I find myself in one of Hogwarts' many spare classrooms. The desks have been pushed to one side; three are in a row, covered in velvet, and the judges except Dumbledore are sitting behind them. A fat man with a camera is ogling Fleur out of the corner of his eye; she's tossing her gorgeous hair like an angry horse, staring out a window; Krum is skulking in a corner; and my heart skips a beat when I notice Claude Ravel leaning against the window, beside Fleur.

Claude is one of the rejected Beauxbatons applicants; he's long-limbed, lean, handsome, and charming. The short version is that last time round, he asked me out to the first Hogsmeade trip, next week, and we dated for the rest of the year. Then he dumped me and went back to France, and I never heard from him again. He couldn't be bothered doing the long-distance thing; not for me, anyway. I was quite heartbroken; he was the first, maybe only boy I really loved. Seeing him now is like a sliver of glass between my ribs.

When I first got back here, he was probably the single thing I was most afraid of. I had to date him, I thought, because otherwise there'd be an unexplained divergence from the timeline, and I hadn't exactly been shy in our relationship the first time, so Snape would surely notice; but I wasn't sure I could bring myself to go through with it. Even if I tried, I'd always be holding something back, Claude would surely notice the difference, and I think he wouldn't stay with a girl who wasn't dedicated to him.

Possibly the only silver lining to me becoming a champion is that it's a large enough divergence that it justifies me refusing to go out with him. Snape could invent dozens of believable reasons for himself, the most obvious being that I don't think I have enough time for a boy, what with the Tournament to deal with. Really, it'd be more suspicious if I didn't let something like that affect my personal life at all.

That's all well and fine, but … I'm not sure I can deal with this.

"Are you alright, Miss?" Claude asks, with that heartbreaker smile. I feel my cheeks heat up a little; he caught me staring.

I hate my life.

I hate his more, but it'd be out of character for me to ignore him outright. "Yeah, I'm fine," I say. "I was just thinking that everyone here is a champion, a judge, or press, right? Everyone except you."

I'm an idiot. Why am I _talking_ with him and going so far as to give him conversational hooks?

How is he making me _do_ this?

He kicks off from the wall and unfurls in the way leggy people often do, walking over. I move to the side unconsciously, like a circling duellist keeping her distance. "Madame Maxime asked me to come," he says. "As moral support for Fleur, you know."

My eyes flick to Fleur, who doesn't acknowledge him. Last time, he said that Fleur and the other Beauxbatons students had 'had words' after she was selected. Possibly Maxime ordered him along to try to cheer Fleur up, and the teenagers weren't having any of it? But he didn't say anything about that last time.

This is all my fault somehow, isn't it.

"It must be hard, being away from your family and friends," I say.

"Oh, it's not so bad," he says. I have to keep glancing back to Fleur, because if I look at his smile, something's going to snap. "Many of my friends are with me … and it gives me the chance to meet some truly charming English people."

"Let me know when you find one," I say without thinking.

He laughs. "You know, I told myself that you looked interesting the very first time I saw you, that night in the Great Hall," he says. "My name's Claude Ravel." He offers me a hand; I have no choice but to shake it, and he kisses my hand. He did that the first time, too. He's barely even putting it on; Maxime makes her students do that sort of thing all the time.

"I'm Su. Su Li," I say, as though he didn't already know. This is going horribly. "Um, I heard we were taking photos? Or, um, having them taken of us?"

I address this to the cameraman, largely because I don't like it when old men ogle my Fleur and I'd like to distract him, but it's Bagman who replies. "We're having the Weighing of the Wands ceremony first," he says, "but we can't begin that until our wand expert is here. Not to mention all the champions." He frowns. "Harry was here earlier, but he wandered off with Rita. That was a while ago. Maybe you could look for him?"

That would be Rita Skeeter, the tabloid reporter who wrote that gooey personal piece for him and later the interview about You-Know-Whose revival. I shudder to imagine what he's doing to persuade her to do that.

"It would make more sense for the person who doesn't have to be here to go," Karkaroff says, giving Claude an unimpressed look. Karkaroff is my new favourite judge.

Claude gives an easy Gallic shrug. "Of course I'll go, if you like," he says. "Su, would you like to come with me?"

Hell, no.

"Okay," I chirp.

_Dammit!_

He opens the door for me, and we walk out, where a low burble of voice immediately attracts us to a broom cupboard in an alcove. That's … ew. I'm not going anywhere near that. The Weighing surely isn't all that important anyway.

"I've heard that there's a village just outside Hogwarts," Claude says, turning his smile up.

He's about to ask me to show him around Hogsmeade, so I dash forward and wrench open the cupboard door. There's a flurry of activity, like cockroaches scurrying out of a room when you turn a light on, and Skeeter and Potter are looking up at me from upturned buckets. She has a perfectly neutral expression; Potter looks relieved. Yeah, I'll bet.

"Hi, Bagman wants you back," I say, rather quickly.

"Oh, does he?" Potter says, clearly trying not to whoop.

Credit where it's due: he is putting up with her for the sake of the timeline. I can only assume things happened more or less the same way the first time around.

There are footsteps behind me; I step backward to get them and the cupboard door in sight at once. It's Dumbledore and Ollivander. I suppose he's a pretty logical wand expert.

"Good afternoon, all," Dumbledore says pleasantly. "I understood there were rather more people involved today?"

"Oh, yes, Dumbledore," Rita says obeisantly, "just in there … do you want to go ahead?"

"After you, Rita," Dumbledore says, eyes a-twinkle. "I insist."

The six of us troop inside; I bounce to the lead. Claude won't ask me unless he can get me alone; it's not his style. Krum gives me a brief look; Fleur not even that.

"Good afternoon, everyone; may I present Mr Ollivander?" Dumbledore says. There's a burble of greetings.

"Shall we begin, then?" Crouch says.

Claude moves back to the window to smile at me, the late afternoon sunshine lighting him up from behind, turning his hair to silvery fire, making him into an angel. He hasn't spared a glance for Potter or Krum, or even Fleur. Maybe he's flirting with me to annoy her? I need to manoeuvre him into doing something that will give me a legitimate excuse to avoid him, fast. At least I can justify ignoring him during this ceremony.

Ollivander waits for us champions to sit down before asking Fleur for her wand. He twirls it around those long, spidery fingers of his, checking the finish, conjuring a shower of fluorescent sparks. They discuss it for a minute – apparently she's a Veela; I thought as much, it explains why all the straight girls hate her – before he conjures her some flowers and give them and the wand to her. Ew; he's far too old for her. She needs a younger touch, obviously.

"Miss Li, if I might have you next?" he asks.

He seems to brighten on seeing my wand. "Ah, I remember this one very well. Ten and a quarter inches, willow with sphinx hair, whippy. I seldom use cores other than dragon heartstring, unicorn hair and the rare phoenix feather, which I call the Supreme Cores, but … on occasion …"

I plaster on a fake smile. I can't prove anything, but I suspect he took me for a tourist and gave me one of his less successful experiments. You'd think that a wand with an exotic core would be in at least one respect better than the mass-produced unicorn and dragon wands, but no. If anything I think it's worse; I've tried swapping wands with my classmates a few times over the years, as everyone does, and my performance always deteriorates less than theirs from using an unfamiliar wand. I can only assume that this means that my wand is worse, or at least that it has a steeper learning curve. On the bright side, I expect that it would have been ruinously expensive if wands weren't so heavily subsidised, so I sort of made a profit.

Ollivander examines the wand very closely, spins it, conjuring silk ribbons that twist themselves into dancing figures and fade out of existence, and gives it back.

"This is in perfect working order, Miss Li," he says. "Mr Krum, if I may see your wand?"

Back in fifth year, when Umbridge made us read that tedious textbook almost every class, DADA quickly became the dullest subject. It even exceeded History, because it was so disappointing; we were used to having interesting teachers for DADA … for a certain value of 'interesting'. When you're that bored, even the most inane, immature things become funny. So it was for us when, after I once had a Freudian slip and accidentally wrote 'wang' instead of 'wand' on an essay, Padma and Kevin substituted the word in _every single time_ for the entire year. They repeatedly bewitched my book to say it, and whispered it into my ear whenever Umbridge said it, which was at least once every lesson. I kept resolving to stop laughing at it, because frankly it's the oldest double entendre in the book, but every time it cracked us up. Our giggling must have lost us over a hundred points over the year. Even Tracey got into it one time when we were working in the library. It was even more annoying than _Weasley Is Our King_, which once got stuck in Lisa's head for nine days straight after she heard Flitwick singing it before a Frog Choir recital.

I couldn't say why that memory chose this moment to resurface, but it couldn't have come at a worse time. I slap a hand over my mouth to catch my snigger, but everyone hears me anyway and stares.

"Sorry," I say, "I just … remembered a joke I heard earlier."

The judges try to keep their expressions neutral. Fleur doesn't; she rolls her eyes like she can't believe she has to waste her time with a fourteen-year-old, and Claude gives me one of those pitying smiles you give to someone you're trying to be nice to but they're just too weird for you to deal with. A lot of people have looked like that at Luna Lovegood. I have to admit that I'm one of them; my opinion of her only rose after I heard of some of what she did last year.

I hate looking so stupid in front of them both. I wish I didn't care. About Claude, at least.

Ollivander resumes his investigation of Krum's wand, probing and prodding it suggestively.

"Hornbeam and dragon heartstring?" he asks. "Rather thicker than one usually sees … quite rigid … ten and a quarter inches …" He waves it, and out spurts a fountain of white wine.

I'm biting the inside of my cheek, hard, and it's a good thing he's done because I couldn't hold it in much longer. He Vanishes the wine and returns Krum's wand.

"This leaves Mr Potter," Ollivander says. Potter pulls out his w– his _wand_, and hands it over. "Aaaah, yes … yes, yes, yes, how well I remember."

What exactly is all this about?

Ollivander investigates it in much closer detail than the rest of ours. "Eleven inches, holly, and the phoenix feather core …" he says at length. "This wand is in excellent condition, Mr Potter. You've been treating it, I assume?"

"Why, I polished it just last night," Potter says.

At this, I double over and burst out laughing. It takes me a good thirty seconds to get myself back under control. Potter is scarlet; Ollivander impassive; Dumbledore has a twinkle in his eye which tells me he knows exactly what I'm thinking. The other judges are glaring; Fleur and Krum roll their eyes again; Rita and the cameraman are exchanging sceptical looks. Claude's expression has shifted to that one you get when you're worrying that the weirdness might be contagious.

Ollivander, who's decided to pretend nothing happened, conjures a glass statue of a dog, which barks and wags its tail before dissolving into a flash of light, and tells Potter that his wand is working fine. I'm so glad that's over.

"Thank you all," says Dumbledore, rising. "You may go back to your lessons now –"

It's a mark of how uncomfortable I am that I immediately stand to leave, even knowing that nothing but the Skrewts await me, but that wretched cameraman clears his throat first.

The photo shoot is actually kind of insulting. The judges all primp and preen in the back, as they're all taller than us champions. Krum keeps waddling off to the side, but Karkaroff manoeuvres him back toward the centre of the scene. The leering cameraman insists that Fleur has pride of place, which I admit is sensible since she's gorgeous; Skeeter wants an unwilling Potter in the front, which makes sense too because he's famous and also because he's short so he won't get in anyone else's way.

I'm also shorter than the others, but no-one mentions this. I find myself shunted off to the side, barely in frame. When I try to move back to the centre, the cameraman, Skeeter and Karkaroff all push me back, saying I'm getting in the way.

I'm not Fleur, but I'm hardly _ugly_. I'm cute. I'm much more photogenic than Crouch is. Frankly I think I look better than Potter or Krum do, for our genders and ages.

After the group photos, the cameraman takes separate ones. He takes twelve of Fleur, eleven of Potter, eight of Krum, and three of me.

"Is that all?" I ask.

"It should be enough, yeah," he replies, looking as though he'd like another of Fleur.

I'm almost tempted to stop holding back and win this Tournament, just to show them.


	6. A Friend of a Friend: Lucius' Day

Lucius Malfoy nursed his cup of tea, regarding his old associate patiently. Yaxley had invited himself over with perfect manners and spent the past hour and a half enquiring after the family's health, finances, and everything else under the sun, which in Slytherin terms was more or less the equivalent of walking up to someone, winking, rubbing one's fingers together, and nodding toward somewhere secluded.

"The motion to reduce the first wand subsidy isn't doing well at all, I'm afraid to say," he said. "As with so many of Dumbledore's early ideas, it's simply too popular among the lower classes; too many families of the Wizengamot refuse to take a stand when they won't reap a short-term gain."

"This is everything wrong with the world today," Yaxley agreed.

Lucius stretched slightly. "Too true, my old friend, too true. But that's enough about my troubles. To what do I truly owe this pleasure?"

He put no inflection on the word 'truly'. He didn't need to. He'd prefer to wait for Yaxley to bring his ulterior motive up of his own accord, as this would show that Yaxley's need was greater than Lucius' curiosity, which would give him a tactical advantage; but that could potentially take days, and he had things to do.

"I've been keeping in contact with a mutual acquaintance," Yaxley answered. "They have disturbing news about Sirius Black."

'Mutual acquaintance' was a euphemism for 'Death Eater', as were a few other non-incriminating terms such as 'the old crowd' and 'a friend of a friend', used interchangeably and as made the most sense in context. There were no eavesdroppers in Malfoy Manor, but it was better to make a habit of it in private than slip up in public.

"The notorious mass murderer?" Lucius said drily; like most Death Eaters, he was forever amused by the irony that Black had received life in Azkaban while he walked free.

"As you know, Snape caught him four months ago, at Hogwarts," Yaxley said. "Only a few minutes before he was due to be executed – and rightfully so, of course – he slipped through the law's fingers. Why do you suppose that is?"

"I seem to recall Snape blaming Potter, at the time. Although, reading between my son's lines, that's as much a nervous tic as anything else."

Yaxley visibly filed this information away for later perusal. "Our friend thinks it was Dumbledore."

"Oh? Do tell."

Yaxley began counting on his fingers. "First: Dumbledore was aware Black was caught. He certainly would have been able to break him out if he wanted, what with Hogwarts' maze of secret passages. Second: if Dumbledore had not wanted Black to escape, he certainly could have held him. Third: Dumbledore had a motive. If Sirius were exonerated, he would be first in line to inherit the Black fortune."

Opportunity, lack of alternatives, motive. "Not quite, Yaxley," Lucius said. "That privilege goes to my lovely wife."

"Inheritance is patriarchal," Yaxley replied.

"Not if the man is disowned," Lucius concluded with a smile. "I recall Walburga was rather emphatic on that count."

"You forget, Malfoy, who our enemy is. Dumbledore is the Chief Warlock and still a public darling. He has falsified codicils signed with her name, reinstating Sirius; when the time is ripe, he will publish them and bring the traitor out of hiding. He always knew how to manipulate people; he'll have the fortune for his own within a month, and be using the old families' own money against us. Again."

Malfoy steepled his fingers. It was a compelling tale, but he wasn't stupid, and Yaxley was never quite as good at manipulating people as he thought he was. "Not without proof of Black's innocence, he won't."

"A little bird told me that he believes Peter Pettigrew is still alive, and that he worked for a friend of a friend," Yaxley replied. "Possibly he is merely mad … but perhaps not, and in any case that doesn't matter to Dumbledore. All he cares about is whether enough proof exists for the man on the street. He has the allegiance of that werewolf he hired last year, who was Black's bosom friend at school … he has plenty of old friends in the DMLE, Moody can't be the only one … what Dumbledore can't prove, he can forge."

Malfoy made a contemplative noise. "I shall have to verify this with my own sources, of course," he said.

"Of course."

"Assuming you are correct … I suppose you have a solution?"

"Is it not obvious?" Yaxley asked. "Your wife is the last extant Black with inheritance rights. Have her exercise them and drain the assets. To be held in trust, naturally, until your son is of age."

"As you say, inheritance laws are patriarchal. She doesn't have the right to annex a family's property. In another two years it will be a different story, but until then, I am reluctant to risk a scandal for money which my family will inherit anyway." A scandal, and more importantly, possible legal issues. Dumbledore really would like to get that money.

"Dumbledore knows that as well as you do. In one and a half years at most, he will produce his proof of Black's innocence. That's quite enough time for him to fabricate anything he still needs."

Malfoy maintained his unimpressed expression, knowing that Yaxley had to have more.

"If you are reluctant to commit to something risky, why not at least ask for an accounting?" Yaxley suggested innocently. "The law can't possibly blame you for checking on your wife's family. Gold is one thing, but the Blacks own countless priceless artefacts; and if Dumbledore got a hold of them, well, that would be a crime against the family's honour. He might throw them out, or use them for his own agenda."

Malfoy sat back and smirked. "One item in particular, I assume?"

Yaxley started, then bit his lip, obviously thinking fast about how much he could afford to tell Malfoy. Malfoy let him; he was the superior verbal duellist, he'd learn Yaxley's game sooner or later, just as long as he kept talking.

"This particular information does not leave this room," Yaxley said. "Not for your wife, your son, your best friend."

"As you wish," Lucius said, folding his hands before his mouth to hide a smirk.

"I have reason to believe that Regulus Black came into possession of a locket once owned by Salazar Slytherin himself, one with a great enchantment which I would like to study."

"Mm-hmm. I can imagine Dumbledore would love to put such a thing on a pedestal to Mudblood tolerance. That, or melt it down for scrap." He stretched again. "Suppose I hear more tales about Black, and decide to believe them, and I find this locket … you're quite right, one of Salazar's personal possessions really would be priceless. Why would I give it to you?"

"Because the enchantment is the key to bringing the old crowd back to its rightful glory. And only I have the expertise to identify it, let alone use it."

Lucius shut his eyes to process this. Yaxley was obviously dissembling somehow. The trick was working out exactly where.

Yaxley had no claim whatsoever to the Black fortunes, of that he was quite sure. He was devoted to the cause, certainly; he wouldn't stab Lucius in the back unless it benefited him directly. Withdrawing one item from the Black properties should be safe. Lucius was confident of all of these facts; he had possibly Britain's finest network of personal contacts, and one of them should have given him at least a whisper if Yaxley ever began having ideas. If Yaxley wanted any other item from the Black properties, this would be a terrible way of getting at it; if he meant to steal anything, he hardly would have drawn Lucius' attention to it. Therefore, the prevarication was something to do with the enchantment, and restoring the Dark Lord.

He mused on this. The war was the best time of his life, in one way, but in another it was the worst. Back then, they were showing the world the real cost of mindless miscegenation; teaching the low-bloods their place; making real progress toward making the world a better place. It didn't hurt that it was all so _fun_, either. Great company, a great leader, great work, great food even; the younger men were surrounded by gorgeous women wherever they went, the older ones living vicariously through them; everything was just about perfect. There was nothing more glorious than a great moral crusade when one was succeeding and receiving due recognition for it.

But then, somehow, they lost. When the Dark Lord fell, for some reason he'd never understand, they all fell apart in a matter of hours. No-one had bothered to plan at all for what they would do if their trump card, their solution to every problem, just somehow _died_ at the hand of a one-year-old; it was so far beyond the realms of possibility that no-one had even considered it. The Dark Lord had boasted of his immortality, time and again, and when it fell through, the entire organisation collapsed as much out of sheer surprise as anything else. With more time, maybe they could have recovered and finished their work, but the Order of the Phoenix made a series of devastating lightning raids in the first few hours and crippled the Death Eaters.

By itself, this wouldn't be a problem; blood purism had plenty of popular support, their losses were replaceable, but for the nature of the Dark Lord's demise. Two of Dumbledore's staunchest supporters died opposing him to protect their son; all credit for bringing about a ready peace fell straight at the old Muggle-lover's feet, as though peace did anything but spit on the sacrifices of those brave men who'd given their lives over the past thirteen years. With his masterful politicking, he transmuted this into his position as Chief Warlock and an endless stream of blatantly pro-Mudblood legislation, which passed with the support of countless families hoping to ingratiate themselves with the new world order.

Lucius was one of the few who dared stand against him, tirelessly working against each new law, making sure to take the initiative where possible. Last year, he methodically exploited that oaf Hagrid's fondness for dangerous beasts to try to have him and thus Dumbledore discredited; the year before, he had briefly – gloriously – had Dumbledore suspended from Hogwarts, until the man somehow came out smelling like roses. Lucius would keep fighting, of course, but that meant he couldn't afford to let the old man get even more public support. The odd demonstration like the jaunt at the World Cup was one thing, but it would be a disaster if the old crowd tried to reassemble without the Dark Lord and was promptly defeated again by Dumbledore, and it would be even worse if an old bean counter like Yaxley was caught trying some unworkable, doomed-to-failure scheme to bring back the Dark Lord.

On the other hand, though … if there were a real possibility to bring him back – and one which Lucius could disavow if it didn't pan out – then he couldn't conscionably let it pass. Yaxley's description sounded strangely similar to the description the Dark Lord had given of his school diary, and that had very nearly purged Hogwarts and weakened Dumbledore; if this purported locket were anything like that, it would be hugely useful, regardless of the old crowd. And even if Yaxley were lying outright about the nature of the locket and its enchantment, he still believed that it was valuable somehow.

Lucius could undoubtedly decipher the enchantment without Yaxley, but that would cost him favours. If he let Yaxley have first crack at it, he'd be earning the favours instead. Other salient concerns were that this would be better for secrecy, keeping it between them and Narcissa; and that Yaxley clearly wanted the item very much. If he had a taste of it but Lucius kept control, that would put him in a very pleasant position indeed. And if he didn't at least let Yaxley see it, he might try to steal it, which would be unfortunate no matter what happened.

"I will retain possession of the locket," Lucius said, letting his eyes slit open so he could read Yaxley's expression. "It doesn't leave Malfoy or Black properties; any work or investigation will take place in one of my laboratories. One of my new house-elves will be in attendance to ensure nothing untoward happens."

Yaxley contemplated this. "That would be acceptable," he said at length.


End file.
